Odds Quotes - Page 21

• Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what’s needed to be done. Today we are called once more — and it is time for our generation to answer that call. For that is our unyielding faith — that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Our Generation, People

  Official Announcement of Candidacy for US President, Delivered 10 February 2007, Springfield, Illinois

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• Celebrity seems totally at odds with authentic community and honest, real sorts of relationships.

  Rob Bell

  Real, Community, Honest

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• When an office-holder facing a multi-count indictment says that he has decided to spend more time with his family, the proper response is a horse-laugh. When an accused politician explains that a charge of corruption is 'really' an attack on his or her race, religion, ethnic background or gender, the odds that something felonious happened jumps.

  Jeff Greenfield

  Horse, Race, Laughing

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• There isn't a woman player in the world I can't give knight-odds to and still beat.

  Bobby Fischer

  Player, Knights, Giving

  "Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Master". Interview with Ralph Ginzburg, harpers.org. January 1962.

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• In Las Vegas, people know that the odds are stacked against them. On Wall Street, they manipulate the odds while you are playing the game.

  John Ensign

  Wall, Business, Vegas

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• Amateurs look for challenges; professionals look for easy trades. Losers get high from the action; the pros look for the best odds.

  Alexander Elder

  Business, Challenges, Getting High

  Alexander Elder (2002). “Come Into My Trading Room: A Complete Guide to Trading”, p.12, John Wiley & Sons

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• Teens like a lot of the same things adults do: smart people doing amazing things against awful odds.

  Kim Harrison

  Smart, People, Adults

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• You are not obligated to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and find a way to conquer the odds, to be stronger or transform yourself into some better version of yourself. The pain you are feeling (whatever the degree) may be a reminder that things are not as they should be.

  Tullian Tchividjian

  Pain, Feelings, Stronger

  Source: www.lifeisstory.com

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• As the Republican Party has moved farther and farther to the right, I have found myself increasingly at odds with the Republican philosophy and more in line with the philosophy of the Democratic Party.

  Arlen Specter

  Philosophy, Party, Lines

  Speech on Joining Democratic Party, www.foxnews.com. April 28, 2009.

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• Like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagrams of my motor. A thousand secrets of nature which I might have stumbled upon accidentally I would have given for that one which I had wrestled from her against all odds and at the peril of my existence.

  Nikola Tesla

  Secret, Lightning, Might

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• I quite like that jeopardy, those up-against-the-wall odds. I don't like it when it's over-comfortable, too easy, something that can be done in two or three weeks. I like a challenge.

  Gordon Ramsay

  Wall, Two, Challenges

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• What odds does it make to the man who lives within Nature's bounds, whether he ploughs a hundred acres or a thousand?

  Horace

  Men, Doe, Acres

  "Satires". Book by Horace, Book I, satire i, line 48, c. 35 BC.

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• I hold no brief for Communists, but I believe in and will defend their right to act independently within the law. I question whether members of the committee are interested in defending our form of government or whether they are attempting to suppress political opinion at odds with their own.

  Gregory Peck

  Believe, Political Opinions, Government

  "Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life". Book by Lynn Haney, p. 167, 2003.

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• The ordinary person senses the greatness of the odds against him even without thought or analysis, and he adapts his attitudes unconsciously. A huge passivity has settled on industrial society. For people carried about in mechanical vehicles, earning their living by waiting on machines, listening much of the waking day to canned music, watching packaged movie entertainment and capsulated news, for such people it would require an exceptional degree of awareness and an especial heroism of effort to be anything but supine consumers of processed goods.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Attitude, Greatness, People

  "The Mechanical Bride : Folklore of Industrial Man" by Marshall McLuhan, (p. 21), 1951.

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• I examined my Liberalism and found it like an addiction to roulette. Here, though the odds are plain, and the certainty of loss apparent to anyone with a knowledge of arithmetic, the addict, failing time and again, is convinced he yet is graced with the power to contravene natural laws. The roulette addict, when he invariably comes to grief, does not examine either the nature of roulette, or of his delusion, but retires to develop a new system, and to scheme for more funds.

  David Mamet

  Grief, Loss, Law

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• The biggest piece of advice that I give young comedians is: If it's your goal to get where I'm at, go do something else. Because you'll never get here. Never. The odds are so bad. Because not only do you have to be a really, really strong comedian but you also have to be lucky. And most people don't get that combination.

  Ron White

  Strong, People, Giving

  Source: www.dead-frog.com

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• The tough decisions that a president has to make in the Oval Office are in no way related to the capability of a person to do well on television. On the other hand, the capability of a person to project favorably on television enhances that person's odds of being elected so he can serve in the Oval Office. So you can't ignore the talents, one, to be very effective on television, and on the other hand, to be very effective as an operating president.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Hands, Office, Decision

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• There is no academic virtue in playing mediocre football and no academic vice in winning a game that by all odds one should lose...There has indeed been a surrender at Notre Dame, but it is a surrender to excellence on all fronts, and in this we hope to rise above ourselves with the help of God.

  Theodore Hesburgh

  Football, Winning, Games

  "The Facts Of The Matter". Sports Illustrated, January 19, 1959.

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• ...first check whether the market as a whole is rising or falling. In other words, are you in a bull market or bear market? If the latter, stay out. The odds are against you.

  Nicolas Darvas

  Fall, Rising, Bulls

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• The way past despair and false hope is just letting go. It doesn't improve your odds of survival, but it doesn't waste mental energy.

  James Alan Gardner

  Letting Go, Past, Survival

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• I read that nine out of 10 women fantasize about having an unknown man leap through their bedroom window at night and make mad, passionate love to them. Who would think with those odds, I would now be facing 150 hours of community service.

  Emo Philips

  Men, Thinking, Night

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• Coming up with a funny joke is like falling in love: It can hit you any time, anywhere. Having said that, the more you put yourself out there, the better your odds will be.

  Emo Philips

  Falling In Love, Funny Jokes, Said

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• The heavy odds against finding the desired... work of art in the mess and flux of life, as opposed to the serene orderliness of imagined reality, give a special tense dazzle and an atmosphere of tour de force to any photographs that succeed in the search.

  Janet Malcolm

  Art, Reality, Giving

  Janet Malcolm (1997). “Diana & Nikon: Essays on Photography”

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• When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them. That is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.

  Mark Twain

  Prayer, Waiting, Different

  Mark Twain (2010). “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, p.8, Collector's Library

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• When we got Tesla going at the very beginning, if you asked me what I thought the odds of success were, I would have said less than 50%. I would have said that failure is the most likely outcome.

  Elon Musk

  Outcomes, Tesla, Said

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